For the second time in as many years, Jannik Hansen is headed for a European vacation. I don't mean this literally of course but last season Jannik Hansen followed up on a breakout 2010-11 season that saw him morph into a playmaking, hard-hitting super pest with a listless, non-physical campaign in 2011-12. As a result the illustrious "#shap crew" coined the nickname "European vacation" for him, and that nickname was then popularized by Jason Botchford.

Well this time it's for real, as Jannik Hansen has agreed to a deal with Tappara of the SM-Liga (the Finnish elite league). Per the official Tappara Twitter feed:

In case you were wondering how they say "Canucks" in Finnish, wonder no more! "Canucksissa" it is. [Correction: via Eetu Huisman "Canucksissa" means "in (the) Canucks". We don't have prepositions in Finnish, we have suffixes."]

Read on past the jump for more.

So, Jannik Hansen is following in the footsteps of Dale Weise and becoming just the Canucks second roster player to head overseas during the ongoing NHL lockout. Early on in the lockout it was rumoured that he'd joing the Rødovre Red Bulls in his native Denmark. Clearly however he has opted to play in a more difficult league, like most Danish born NHLers who have signed in Europe this fall. According to Finnish hockey writer Matias Strozyk, Hansen will make his debut with Tappara on Thursday.

Even without Jannik Hansen, Tappara is a relatively interesting team. Their roster already features several familiar names like hard-shooting defenseman Kurtis Foster, Ville "the smile" Nieminen (the bane of the WCE era Canucks) and also a possible lottery pick in uber-talented 17-year-old Aleksander Barkov. With that collection of talent, Tappara games might actually be worth checking out if you can find an on-line stream of their games.

Thomas Drance lives in Toronto, eats spicy food and writes about hockey. He is the editor in chief of the Nation Network (a.k.a Overlord), and an opinionated blowhard to boot. You can follow him on twitter @thomasdrance.